SG: Subtler Than Light #8 (3/3): Just Happen

(concluded from part two, preceding...)

***

Huge piles of bones tended to look all the same after a while, Johnny Clark thought. Save for the vividly painted child skulls, they blended into a haze of grey-and-white. Only the more jagged and monstrous shapes offered much to navigate by. Every step he took led him further down... even when he tried doubling back on his tracks.

The Path of Bone inevitably led to the Charnel House, he recalled Cendra quoting from Cartier's journal... no matter which way you went.

"Cendra, come in," Johnny said into the transceiver clipped to his violet-green-and-neon-umber t-shirt. "Cendra? Este? Anyone?"

Only hisses and pops came in response.

"Great," he muttered, looking around to see which direction looked slightly less like it would lead to nowhere than another. "Guess I missed the lecture on navigating quasi-liminal deathland spaces when I was at the Academy." He frowned. "Was that Professor Piranha's class, or..." He shook his head. "Doesn't really matter, does it?"

He could hear his mother now. Key Li Pan, the famous superguy known worldwide as MeltDown, telling him if he just applied himself to his studies, and stopped being distracted by every new thing he learned about outside of class, he could've aced his classes. To which he often replied, in a voice sometimes barely restrained from a shout, that he knew that, and that the classes were great for kids who knew where, why, and how they wanted to superguy, would join the best superteams and patrol twice nightly on the most optimal routes through the cities they called theirs and would always stand chin-up and chest-out for the noble quest for justice. It was a good way... but it wasn't his way, and the day he realized it had been the day he left the Academy for good.

But would it really have killed him to pick up a few things before he did, Key would invariably reply.

He had no good answer to that at the moment.

Skeleton warriors gave him a wide berth. He wondered if they were fighting on behalf of anyone in particular, or if they were just generally antagonistic towards people flying in and blowing apart their nicely stacked mortal remains. Whatever the case, after the first few broke off their own arms trying to swing a cutlass at his chest, and after he swatted a few more into pieces, they left him alone. He heard the howls of the weres, but none appeared where he wandered. That only left...

He stopped. Listened.

"...a tiger?" a high-pitched voice asked. "That must've been terrifying! Did you try to pet it?"

The voice was faint. Johnny focused his hearing, then set out into what looked like muddy darkness.

"Well, how am I supposed to know?" the voice went on. "You're skulls, so you must'a died *somehow.*"

He felt the air shift around him, as if he wasn't just descending on a physical plane, but through... dimensions? Frequencies? Cross-dimensional beaded curtains? The space he was in resisted understanding. But so long as he focused on the voice...

"Okay, I gotta say this," said the voice, now louder. "Alas, my dude, I knew you well..."

Johnny stepped into a clearing, and immediately saw the speaker. For the first time since he'd descended along the Path of Bone, he smiled.

"Camila! There you are!"

"Johnny!" Camila Veracruz called. The werewolf girl, clothing torn in a few places but looking overall uninjured, looked from him to the two painted skulls floating on either side of her and back. "I was just talking to Vimala and Yorick. They live here!"

The skulls, which were floating at what for young Camila was eye-level, bobbed in the air in what Johnny could only assume was a nod of greeting. One was painted in orange and black stripes, leavened with streaks of red. The other sported a checkerboard design with a rainbow of colors.

"Er," said Johnny. He was pretty sure none of his Academy lectures covered this, though possibly Dr. Gigawatt had rambled on about it sometime over the years between bong rips. "Hi?"

"This is Vimala," said Camila, gesturing at the red-streaked skull as he approached. "She got eaten by a tiger about three-and-a-half thousand years ago. Yorick had his throat slit by a singing barber in fifteenth-century England. Says his name's a complete coincidence."

"Is it?"

Camila shook her head and hugged him. "I'm sorry you all came in here after me! I was just gonna stop at the camp and see what was going on! Honest!"

At that moment, Johnny's clip-on transceiver hissed with a crackly voice. "...come in! Cendra Seconds to anyone who can hear me. Report!"

"Johnny Clark here," said Johnny, after tapping his device. "I found Camila, she's with me. A bit banged up but otherwise healthy and intact."

"Oh, Johnny, thank you," Cendra replied, with great relief. "Young lady, when we get out of here, you are so..."

Abruptly, the connection faded.

"Pretty sure I'm not the one you're going to be in trouble with," said Johnny. Camila reluctantly nodded, conceding the point. "*Are* you okay? I was kinda guessing when I was talking to your mom."

"My shoulder's kinda tender," said Camila, stepping back and rubbing her right one. "I ran into a pile of bones before the jet pack conked out." She frowned and looked at Yorick, who had taken to circling both of them. "I'm *pretty* sure his bones are like ours. Maybe stronger. Why?"

If Yorick had an answer to this, they never learned it. Both he and Vimala spun in midair, stared into a patch of darkness, then jetted off as fast as whatever it was keeping them aloft would allow.

"Johnny...?" Camila asked, moving to his side.

"Be ready," he told her.

"For what?"

"Just in general," he said. "Be ready."

*That* was something he remembered from classes.

The blue-bandanad, white-feathered, melancholy-eyed four-foot-tall-bird that ambled from the shadows gave Johnny an evaluative look that would've been right at home at the Academy... or at home with his mother. They cluctched a clipboard in their wings, at which they occasionally glanced. Johnny wondered if it was a scorecard of some kind. The night seemed to call for one.

"You're late," the dodo finally said, its sharp voice making Camila wince. "You've barely got time to get down to the House before the Hour of the Wolf begins. How did you end up here?"

"Practice," said Johnny. "Are... uh... you one of the dodos that were in Malaga earlier today?"

"Hmph," said the dodo. "I suppose we all look alike to you?"

"If you mean 'surprisingly not extinct as a species,' sure," said Johnny. "But beyond that, you're the first one I've seen. I wasn't in Malaga, but I heard the story from the ones who were there."

"I'm Administrator BrAAAAAAAAAAcken," the dodo informed him. "Ordinarily I don't go beyond the House bounds, but tonight's circumstances are *highly* irregular. Highly! Simply *everybody* seems to have barged in tonight. And that armored lunatic babbling about some noise from the dawn of time has stirred up *all* the skulls. Going to take *ages* to get them to settle. The High Technocrus will *hear* about that, I *assure* you!"

"Well, Mister... Mister?" The dodo nodded. "Mister Bracken..."

"BrAAAAAAAAAAcken," the dodo corrected. "Of the Leminock ruling clan of the upper sector of Rai Leb, if you *must* know." He sniffed. "I don't suppose I have to *explain* that what you call Terra Subterrene is home to a wide host of species you consider *extinct.* I mean, I *would,* but as I have previously stated, you do not have the *time.*"

"Hey, Mr. BrAAAAAAAAAAcken, sir?" Camila asked. "Why are there skeleton warriors all about here? Do you make them, or did they just come with the place?"

BrAAAAAAAAAAcken regarded Camila as if he just realized she was standing next to Johnny. He jotted a brief note on his slate.

"Skeleton warriors just happen," he told her, before looking back at Johnny. "You're clearly both new here. To get to the House, just follow the painted skulls. They have so arranged themselves to act as guides. Oh, and have your eight dollars apiece ready."

"Eight... what?" Johnny asked.

"Vimala and Yorick said that we should follow them," Camila told Johnny.

"They sound... helpful," Johnny answered, unable to keep a note of doubt from his voice.

"I believe you'll find the case is they're helping themselves," said BrAAAAAAAAAAcken. "They don't like having to live with the corpses that are left by intruders who overstay their welcome, who neither retreat to the surface world nor enter the House at the end of the Hour of the Wolf." He sighed on seeing Johnny's questioning look. "Roughly four a.m., your time."

Johnny peered in the direction that the skulls of Yorick and Vimala had flown.

Before he could take a step, loud howls swept through the clearing.

Six weres emerged from the darkness. Three werewolves, two werecoyotes, and a werecorgi, all in torn casual clothing and ripped jean shorts. They wobbled and hesitated as they spread out to block the path Johnny had been eyeing.

While Johnny didn't have extensive experience with weres, he had been around Miguel's pack a few times, and thought these weres moved with something less than the grace normally associated with such beings. The lead werewolf, a silver-furred female, stepped unsteadily forward, as if she were in a student filmmaker's stop-motion animated short. While Johnny didn't recognize her, Camila did.

"Nance!" she exclaimed. "Dad was gonna try finding you! Why'd you cast him and me out of your pack?"

Nance, Johnny thought, meant Nancy Penwall, the deputy leader of the were pack that had been, up until that morning, the one Miguel and Camila had been a part of. He'd never met her in person, but knew her reputation. Severe, a bit vindictive, but absolutely loyal to the pack in general and its leader, August Rydell, in particular. What she and the others (who Johnny assumed, for the moment, were also members of the Rydell-led pack) were doing on the Path of Bone was a perplexing question.

Nance growled as Johnny stepped forward. He held up a hand, hoping they were only trying to frighten him and Camila. If things got out of hand, it would be bad... for the ones who tried to bite through his nigh-impenetrable skin.

"Hey," said Camila, "Mr. BrAAAAAAAAAAcken's gone!"

At the mention of BrAAAAAAAAAAcken's name, the weres snarled. Even the werecorgi growled, though it's dopey grin made it sound like it was demanding a ball of some kind be thrown.

"Stop it, Devon!" Camila yelled. "You know me! What are you guys doing?"

Nance lifted one of her arms, as if to swipe her claws at Johnny. Her wrist struck a jagged bone protruding from a nearby pile. Johnny heard the stomach-turning sound of ripping furred flesh, and watched a large strip of it fall away from Nance's arm.

Nance seemed unperturbed, even though her arm bones now showed from shoulder to clawed hand. She growled at Johnny.

"Skeleton warriors just happen," he whispered, with a growing, horrified realization.

"Get ready to run, Cam," said Johnny. "Same direction Yorick and Vimala went, as best as you can figure--"

"I have their scent," Camila said. "From their paint. It's pretty fresh."

"Oh," said Johnny, not really sure what to say to that revelation.

One of the werecoyotes lunged. Johnny swiped at him, snagging his snout. Without meaning to, he tore the were's face clean off...

...revealing a chattering, grinning coyote-like skull. The eyes within darted about.

"Run!" Johnny ordered, as he swept the were aside with an arm. Camila didn't hesitate, dashing ahead in the direction her skull friends had gone. Johnny started after her...

...then covered his ears as explosions rocked the ground all around him.

Bones rained down, only some of which belonged to the attacking weres. Johnny whirled, trying to see what had destroyed them.

Galaxy Hunter landed hard as thunder before him.

He hadn't had much contact with Galaxy Hunter, despite the multiple skirmishes of the day. She'd been in the morning's battle against the demon monkeys outside the _Subtler Than Light,_ he remembered, and had ignored his greeting when she came in later to talk to Cendra in her office. Following the battle on the pier against The Programmer/El Esbirro and the Dweller in the Shades, she'd largely stayed away, searching the city for ki Kazza Malissk.

Her armor had felt ancient to his eyes the times he saw her. He now knew, after hearing the reports from the party that went to Malaga, that it was made from mind-bendingly old metal taken from the crashed elevator long ago ejected from tunnels leading to the Earth's core. Now... it radiated the feeling of aeons... dimensions beyond comprehension and sanity... the dejected surly sulk of Shub-Niggurath's thousand teenage goat spawn...

Hunter raised her armored gauntlet. A seething, red-gold circle of light glowed on its palm-plate, aimed directly at Johnny's head.

"Shun-pike to the center within the center," Hunter said through hidden helmet speakers. "Deep time is here. Deep time is gone. The bl00p at the dawn of the universe. Chao! Chao!"

"Um... okay?" said Johnny. "Can I..."

"CHAO is BOOM!" Hunter yelled, before firing her weapon directly into Johnny's face.

***

The dark was cold and endless. China Moroboshi wasn't entirely sure where she was anymore. There were piles, and stacks, and veritable spires of bones all around, lit by a glow coming from the walls and ceiling of the rocky chamber she was in. She leaned against something for support, and leaped back as the pile it was sticking out of collapsed.

*Nice one,* said the violet and gold-checker-painted skull floating in front of her. *You mean we never got more co-ordinated as we got older?*

"Hush," China snapped at the skull. "And I thought those two little fuckers were annoying."

*We're still here,* said young China, materializing next to the skull.

*I can't believe she still calls us that,* Kyoko said, as she appeared in China's sight, now dressed in black jeans, a red shirt, and a headband made of bloody teeth. *How could anyone not love us?*

"You're worth the effort," adult China said.

"China, is that you?" a familiar voice called.

"Yo, boss," China replied, with a nonchalance she didn't entirely feel. "You okay?"

"Agh," came the reply. Cendra Seconds entered a few seconds later, slithering along on massive black-scaled coils. Her still-human top half was bruised and scarred, but basically intact. The jacket she had worn on descending into the Path was ripped in several places, and there was blood leaking from her lips.

*You lose the bet,* young China told Kyoko. *Someone bit a dude before you.*

*I never get to have fun now that I don't have a real body,* Kyoko moped.

*Are we really like this?* the floating skull asked.

"I bit my lip when a couple weres attacked," said Cendra. "If Manny hadn't driven them away by making them think the walls were singing 'ten thousand bones and things on the ground,' giving me time to transform into a lamia, I might've been a goner." She shook her head. "But I'm okay. And Johnny found Camila. I talked to him on the transceiver for a few seconds before we lost touch again. It's the only reason I can focus now."

Manny Seconds limped into view, accompanied by Karina Selanova. One of his two agents half-skittered, half-limped behind them. "It's been a long time since I used my confusion-generating powers in anything other than a training capacity. The old guy's still got it!"

He held up his hand for a high-five. Karina regarded it for several moments before giving it a tepid slap. Manny's grin remained undiminished.

"I was afraid of this," said Karina. "We're now caught in the cycle between the rise of the Charnel House and the Hour of the Wolf. This won't be as simple as verifying what you wanted and getting out."

"It never is," said Manny. "You okay, China?"

"Yeah," adult China answered, though her eyes stayed fixed on Karina. Briefly, she thought about the bottle Zia had gotten to her via Bonnie, and the exploding-cow hieroglyph etched in its glass. If anyone knew if the Dis/Order of the Exploding Chao was still around, China thought, she would. She might even know why it was renting out lairs to traveling supervillains and pretending they were the M00se Illuminati, or what any of that had to do, if anything, with the situation they were in now.

As Karina steadied Manny and contemplated the floating skull before her, China tried to work out what was going on between the two of them, and between the two of them and Chalandra. Manny and Karina had become entangled in a relationship born of proximity and need during the Genocidal War of the late nineties, while Chalandra had been below in the far-underground tunnels where some of the Earth's superguys hid, communicating with surface counterparts via dream, planning their ultimately-successful counterstrike against the Awe-Inspiring Force's and Unimaginable League Amoral's world-spanning dictatorship, while engaged with a bit of relationship-straining side-action-for-a-necessary-reason herself. There had been considerable friction between the three following the war's end... until there wasn't. China would've suspected they'd opted for polyamory, or at least some swinging Saturday nights, but they never said anything about it, and it didn't quite *feel* like it. After all, if Chalandra had been down to share, the old triangle between her, Manny, and Badass could've resolved itself quite differently. It was almost as if... as if...

China shook her head. No time for a wandering mind, she scolded herself.

She focused... on her own empty eye sockets, now floating before her.

"Everyone," she said, "I'd like you to meet Kofi."

*You don't have to buy me a coffee,* said the skull.

"I'll have to buy her a coffee later," said Manny. "So..."

"You can't hear her?" asked China.

Cendra, Manny, and Karina all shook their heads.

"Boss," said China, "could you... do what you did before?"

"My telepathy isn't so great when I'm in this form," said Cendra, as she slithered forward. "But I'll try."

She took China's hand, while China relaxed her mental defenses as much as she could. They hadn't done this... hadn't *really* done this... since the Monsta Island invasion years ago, China remembered. Since she'd last had to trust someone other than herself inside her skull, seeing what she saw, despite how the Heart of Mu was amplifying her fear and distrust.

It had been hard, then. It was, now, but she shouldered past the familiar discomfort. When she felt Cendra fully behind her eyes, she again regarded the floating skull that was one of her fear's sources.

A face took shape over the skull. Pale, pensive, with glittering, black-irised eyes, a mop of curly black hair, and scarred lips. A body appeared beneath the face, pale and rail-thin, soon obscured by a cloak.

The newly-formed ten-year-old-appearing child looked up at China/Cendra, waiting.

"This is Kofi," said China. "This... was me. Eight hundred or so years ago, until I was sacrificed to a volcano."

"Er..." Manny started.

Cendra waved her hand at him. Manny shuddered a bit, then he and Karina both regarded Kofi as if she'd suddenly appeared. Which, for them, she had. The remaining Secret Service agent seemed unfazed, if they saw the child at all.

"She's... the Bone Child," said Karina.

*Is not!* young China exclaimed, stamping her foot.

*She's got your eyes,* Kyoko said. *And your sparkling personality.*

*Kwenzenjani zinja?* asked Kofi. Then the girl shook her head. *I mean... what's up, dogs?*

"I... remember you," said China. "I remember... being you. Now. As if... as if I always could... but you were... walled off... somewhere."

*Not somewhere,* said Kofi. Her eyes flashed reproach. *Here. On the *Path of Bone.**

"I... didn't know..." China started.

*I knew,* said Kyoko.

*Quiet, interloper,* Kofi said. *You are not one of us. Your guise is false.*

Kyoko stuck out her tongue and vanished. Young China shrugged and vanished as well.

Manny and Karina looked at one another, as if the other might have answers. China noticed that the air was growing hazy behind them, and hoped it was nothing more than more minute bone particles.

*Nicely done,* another voice rasped. China looked up... and saw two more skulls floating toward them.

Two skulls that became two more bone-white children. One wore a contemporary t-shirt and jeans. The other rags that barely stayed on at all. But China knew them both.

"China," said adult China, to the one in modernish garb. "The real one... the last Bone Child I was."

*Hi, Manny,* said the new young China, looking at the flabbergasted aging superguy. *You and CalForce were kind to me, the few weeks you took me in. I'm grateful.*

"Ah," Manny responded, as though trying to remember how words worked. He leaned heavily against Karina, while his cane wobbled in his hand. Behind them, the haze in the air grew thicker, almost obscuring the Secret Service agent. Manny looked up at adult China.

She didn't answer, instead looking at the other child, who stared shyly back at her.

"Hello, Vrik," said China. "It's nice to see you again. Oh, and sorry about the stepping off the mountain path and falling to your death thing. I hate it when that happens."

Vrik didn't answer. Instead, he looked up at Manny and Karina.

*You have a question,* he said. *Ask it, while you can.*

Karina nodded. China felt unsurprised that she was the least rattled by the sudden appearance of several ghost children around her.

"We've come to learn what became of Abelard," said Karina. "The boy--"

*They weren't a boy,* young China interrupted.

"The child, then... that led Richard Cartier to the Charnel House in 1891... and didn't come back to the world outside with him after."

China looked around as Karina spoke... and realized there were eyes in the dark. A lot of eyes, at a lot of heights. A lot of eyes resolving into a lot of painted skulls... resolving into a lot of pale, pensive children. They filled every space on the ground, and many appeared to be watching from atop piles of bones. Their faces showed some variation, their hair and garb more... but all, China knew, were her.

They were surrounded by Bone Children.

"How many..." Cendra started.

"Five hundred and sixteen," China answered. She tried to elaborate, but their experiences were flooding her head. Lives lived in shadows, and sometimes in terror. Born into the world, living roughly to ten years, give or take... then dying. Seldom from natural causes.

"What..." China whispered, shaking as she looked about once more. "What *is* this place?"

*A place that is ours,* a new voice hissed. *A place that *was* ours, until it was taken, and forced to ends we never intended.*

The child that stepped before them was sinuous in movement and dangerous in her regard. Her black hair flowed behind her like an uncoiling whip. Her robes were red, though not from dye. Her hands were clawed, her teeth sharp and long. The Bone Children stepped back as she moved through them, though she acknowledged them not at all.

Karina looked rattled for the first time. Her hand drifted to her gun, though China knew that would do no good here.

"ARCANA?" asked Karina.

The child stopped. Peered up at her.

And laughed.

*A name I wore as a disguise,* she said, *before you killed me.*

"Tara," China said, as she tried to stop shivering.

"Oh!" Manny exclaimed. "I remember now! First true Sorceress Superlative! Was in that big battle against Phil Gilgamesh..." He tapped his foot, thinking. "The Fraggling?"

"*Fracturing,*" China, young China, Vrik, Kofi, Cendra, Karina, and a host of Bone Children corrected. Manny cringed, and didn't follow up.

*This place,* Tara said, fixing her attention on China. *Is us. My beginning. My path to your world. My dream. My... Kalapurnea.*

Kalapurnea. The word given by the ancient Mesopotamians for what China had been... what all the Bone Children had been. Passed on by spilled, consumed blood, new bodies born, memories blurring and submerging, for five millennia... until China. Until Akane Moroboshi broke the cycle. Until Shadebeam Moroboshi made it so she could inhabit a real body, one that aged, and was mortal. The last body she would ever have.

"Your path to our world?" asked Cendra. "You come from another, then?"

Tara smiled. It was not the comforting kind.

*I didn't just appear out of nowhere, five thousand years ago, seeking to consume your world and your universe,* said Tara. Her eyes flicked to China. *You think five thousand years is a long time, my Omega? Perhaps for us. But it is barely a blip on what we were before... there.*

"You mean...?" China asked.

Tara reached out and caressed China's cheek. China felt her touch as if it was physical and real, and fought the strong urge to pull away. Tara's eyes glittered as she leaned close.

*Your Doctor Gigawatt was right about the crisis you are in being partially a crisis of Deep Time,* said Tara. *Only he fails to understand what that Deep Time *is.**

She tapped China's chin with a sharp claw.

*It's *us,* Omega. *We* are the Deep Time in this tale. And to survive this night and pass through to the final Hidden Heart... you shall have to begin to learn what this means.*

Before China could react, Tara drove her claws into her head. As darkness engulfed her, she screamed.


WILL CHINA SURVIVE WHATEVER TARA IS TRYING TO IMPART TO HER?
WILL SHE NEED A STIFF DRINK?
WILL MANNY AND KARINA LEARN WHATEVER IT IS THEY WANTED TO LEARN ABOUT ABELARD?
WILL JOHNNY SURVIVE BEING BLASTED BY GALAXY HUNTER?
WILL GALAXY HUNTER STOP GIBBERING LONG ENOUGH TO MAKE SENSE?
WILL BONNIE GET A CHANCE TO GET THE DAMN THING TO GALAXY HUNTER?
WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN SHE DOES?
IS SLITHIS BEING MIND-CONTROLLED, OR JUST GENERALLY CULTY?
WILL RUMI FORGIVE HIS REVEALING HER IDENTITY AND SCREWING UP HER PLANS?
WILL MORE PEOPLE 'JUST HAPPEN' INTO BECOMING SKELETON WARRIORS?
IS CHAPPEL ROAN GLAD SHE'S NOT REALLY DOWN THERE?
IS CHAPPEL ROAN REALLY NOT DOWN THERE?
IS CHAO BOOM?

Find out soon-ish, in the penultimate chapter of 'Hidden Hearts'... only on... SUPERGUY!

--
Subtler Than Light #8 (c) 2025 by Gary W. Olson. All Rights Reserved.

Gary W. Olson LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/gwox
Superguy/Sfstory LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/superguysfstory

SG: Subtler Than Light #8 (2/3): Warriors

(continued from part two, preceding...)

***

The 'ping' returned.

El Guerrero de los Pantalones pulled up as soon as he was through the entrance to the Path. A pulse from Los Pantalones re-established (in the readings hovering in the periphery of his vision, shown to him by the interface integrated into his bronze-gold mask) the dimensions of the first chamber at once--roughly seventy square meters in area, shaped like a batwing that flared off into multiple smaller passages... and thick with what the first time he'd thought was dust.

It hadn't taken Esteban long to realize it was particles of something else.

Bones lined the pathways below. Any kind one might care to name, and more than a few that his on-board systems couldn't quite place because they were too strangely shaped, too impossibly big, or just too implausibly moving about and pretending to be warriors. The last kind, at least, were no longer present, though Esteban was sure the cutlass-wielding skeleton warriors had not gone far.

The Path of Bone had turned out to be a path of a lot of bones, and bits of bones, leading through jagged heaps of bones. Some of the bones belonged to large flightless birds, or wolves, or horses, or massively-antlered creatures that might have been moose if the weren't so huge. Some could have belonged to dinosaurs. Many appeared to have belonged to humans.

Cendra, who had read Richard Cartier's journal entries about his descent on the Path of Bone to the Charnel House over a century-and-a-quarter before, had warned him and the others. Cartier, the occult detective known then as the Dweller in the Shades, had not had much opportunity to investigate during his foray, but had said theirs was a particularly potent and malignant magic. He had not explained what he meant, other than to warn that going beyond the initial chamber meant an inevitable descent to the Charnel House, and whatever waited there.

Esteban forced his attention back to the cavern. The others had gone on ahead, though he belatedly realized they had not all taken the same passageways into the interior. Camila's surprise flight into the Path had upset everyone's plans, and what might have been a disciplined incursion had turned into a mad rush. Deliberately, he updated his on-board maps, and focused on the source of the 'ping.'

*Coco?* he sent a thought-word into the nectarisitic reaches. *That you?*

As he waited for a response, a sound from below reached his sensors. China Moroboshi had come through the gate, only to face--

Something crashed into his battle trousers, while simultaneously wrapping around his head. Alarms went off in his internal interface. The tentacles that had tried to attach themselves to Los Pantalones were repulsed with a costly burst of nectarisitic energy. With a quick reverse and flip maneuver, he slipped free of the attack on his head, only to see...

"Programmer!" Esteban yelled.

"*The!*" responded the top-half-of-an-oversized-bronze-and-gold-armored-suit-wearing person who'd attacked him. The menacingly awkward yet awkwardly menacing fusion of rococo-ornamented upper torso musculature and dangling unprotected (though now thankfully jeans-wearing) legs jetted by him, nectarisite tentacles zipping back into his chestplate. "Only not anymore! Call me El Esbirro del Traje!"

El Esbirro's tentacles lashed out again, this time aimed at Los Pantalones. Alarmed, Esteban focused on Los Pantalones' defenses, raising an energy surge that repelled the attack and made his thighs tingle in disturbing ways.

"So, El Guerrero!" called El Esbirro, as he hovered into view. The tentacles snapped back into El Esbirro's chestplate, giving Esteban a view of the face otherwise mostly hidden by the helmet.

"Hello, Pr... ah... Esbirro del Traje," Esteban answered. "I was worried--"

"*El*!" El Esbirro yelled. "*El* Esbirro del Traje! I mean, would you like it if people just called you 'Guerrero?'"

Esteban read the rising energy in El Esbirro's suit, and knew he was preparing for another attack. Momentarily, he wished Coco was with him, as the bronze-gold bonobo normally handled the minutiae of operating Los Pantalones so he could focus solely on the business at hand.

"I'm lucky some days if they stick to that," said Esteban. "Who let you out of your cage, anyway? Last I saw, you got taken by the new Dweller and her monkeys."

"Rescued, it turns out," the former The Programmer answered as they circled one another in the particulate-rich air. "They thought I'd gone rogue, but when they heard what I was doing and who was giving me my orders, they OH MY GOD IS THAT CHAPPELL ROAN???"

Esteban was a fraction of a moment too late to keep his scanning systems from looking for Chappell Roan, who proved to not be detectably present in the bone-filled cavern. Two small missiles shot out of the nipple-regions of El Esbirro's suit, striking Esteban before he could intensify his energy defenses. He spun as he flew back, smashing through a pile of ancient-looking bones before striking the cavern wall.

El Guerrero snarled and spit out a mouthful of what he hoped was just spit. After making a note to ask Coco next chance he got just *why* he had included in Los Pantalones a voice-activated subroutine to specifically scan for Chappell Roan, he blasted forward, swooping under the nectarisite tentacles El Esbirro had followed up his missile attack with and striking his helmet with an armored foot.

"AyyyyiiiiiiiiiIIIII!" El Esbirro yelled, as he cartwheeled into a group of recently-arrived skeleton warriors, who quickly were reduced to a pile of skeleton warrior bits. China Moroboshi, who had been menaced by them, gave him a quick wave as she plunged through the farthest and thinnest of the downward-leading passages.

Again, the 'ping' reached him. Cautiously, keeping the monitoring systems of Los Pantalones focused on the still-recovering El Esbirro, Esteban reached out to it's source.

*--come in, Esteban! Urgent!* a voice at once boyish and Robert Goulet-like echoed between his ears.

*Where are you, Coco?* Esteban sent.

*Still on Agent Lemon Rydell's scalp,* Coco reported. A small window featuring the bronze-gold bonobo's face appeared in the upper left of Esteban's field of vision. *He and his team are tracking Adam Seaborn and a group of dodos who are escorting ki Kazza Malissk through the *Path of Bone.* They are close to the Charnel House... oh, my, Este, you have to see this!*

Before Esteban could ask what 'this' was, or opine on if he really wanted to see it at the moment, a larger window opened before his eyes, temporarily obscuring El Esbirro. Light played across a row of extremely colorful and complicated designs, a riot of styles and designs that grew chilling when Esteban realized they were painted onto skulls.

Skulls that were flying about in the air, presumably directly in front of Coco. Which meant they were directly in front of Lemon. *Why* they were zipping about in front of him wasn't so clear, but judging from how quickly Lemon was looking from side-to-side and top-to-bottom, it seemed they were doing an effective job of keeping him from moving forward.

"Apples reported skeleton warriors were fighting in and around here," said Esteban. "Hell, I just saw a group get demolished. Are these--"

"Negative," Coco replied. "We encountered and evaded them. Este..."

Esteban heard the hesitation in the bonobo's voice.

"These are *children's* skulls."

Esteban gaped. The video of flying skulls Coco was transmitting wavered.

"Say again..." he told Coco without much conviction.

*All the painted skulls appear to be those of human children,* Coco said, *approximately nine-to-eleven years of age. I have noted many similaritiesssSSZZZZHHHRRZZZZZZ--*

Coco's voice abruptly stopped, as did the video he was projecting. Esteban looked down at El Esbirro, who had gotten to his feet but was still wobbling about some. If it hadn't been him cutting off the signal, then who--?

*Oh, Guerrero,* a new, more feminine voice said in his head. *When planting spies, you really need to check some aren't getting planted on you.*

The orderly set of monitor windows and control icons that hovered in Esteban's perceptions spun wildly out of control at that moment. Esteban's immediate reaction, to thrust against the direction he thought he was spinning, sent him into another pile of bones and the floor beyond. Before he could re-establish control, he shot up in the air and smacked the cavern ceiling.

*I have him, El Esbirro,* said the voice. *He is... fighting back. Contact... the Dweller!*

*Already done, Letha,* answered El Esbirro, who was no longer staggering. *Just hold on... there!*

Letha, thought Esteban, his mind flashing on his brief fight with El Esbirro that afternoon on the historic Ventura Beach pier--

"Venice Beach," Esteban interrupted.

*What?* El Esbirro asked.

"The author apparently can't keep 'Venice' and 'Ventura' straight in his head," Esteban went on, as he mentally tried to retake control of Los Pantalones. Even had the narrator say I used to be part of the Ventura Vengers, instead of the Venice Vengers."

[Esteban, El Esbirro, and what skeleton warriors were in the vicnity all paused and gave a sour look through the fourth wall at you, the reader.]

"Hey!" Esteban yelled. "Is that Chappell Roan?"

As Letha struggled to keep Esteban's battle pants from again scanning for the tragically absent singer, Esteban mentally triggered the countermeasures he and Coco had laid in to the security systems of Los Pantalones as a last resort for taking control back from an interloper.

A thumping disco beat caused Los Pantalones to shake. Several nearby piles of bones shifted as the merciless music disrupted their resting places. Nectarisitic energy flushed through both Los Pantalones and El Guerrero from head to toe, making his nerves crackle and his heart thunder.

Not even gonna talk about what it did to his spleen.

The bronze-gold macaque who'd introduced herself as Letha was there, microscopically-sized, on his scalp. Esteban thought of Lemon's hand, how it had caressed the back of his head during their kiss in Bonnie's bookstore early that evening. He'd been so focused on getting the micro-sized Coco onto Lemon that he hadn't even *thought* to check...

But wait, he thought to himself. Had Lemon done it deliberately, or had Letha been planted on *him,* only to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity?

He bound micro-Letha in a web of nectarisitic energy, cutting her off from his pants. Abruptly, the chaos in his vision ceased, and he could see the cavernous Path of Bone once more.

Esteban wanted to believe Letha had played Lemon, but felt, deep in his gut, that she hadn't. Lemon had known what he was doing, there in the bookstore. Somehow, no matter what, he always knew.

And if Letha was working with Lemon, that meant...

"Oh, no," Esteban said, as the realization descended upon him.

He took off into the air, increasing velocity as he aimed for the passage he remembered Miguel, Cendra, and the pack going through.

Before he could reach it, a black, swirling circle opened up before him. Unable to stop in time, he plunged through--

--and was suddenly in a red-green-and-orange-lit chamber that seemed to go on forever, surrounding a surprisingly modest-looking church-like structure in the center. Even as he tried to focus on it, to drink in details, it shifted before his eyes, gaining and losing towers and ornamentation. He looked away, trying to find the ground...

...and cried out when he fell away from Los Pantalones.

So dumbfounded was he that he fell for three seconds before remembering to helplessly flail. The floor of the cavern rushed up to greet him as he covered his face.

A few more seconds passed before Esteban realized he had not suddenly pancaked on the bone-strewn floor. Indeed, he was hovering nearly half a foot above it.

"We have him," said someone with a smoke-roughened contralto voice. "Track Los Pantalones, bring them to the encampment when they come down."

Esteban felt himself being rotated in mid-air, so that he was looking up.

The being he looked up at was barely discernible in the particle-rich, freshness-poor air. Esteban spotted a black-and-red symbol on her face mask... and realized who he'd been captured by.

"Dweller... in the Shades," he managed to say, as she pulled away his nectarisite-infused mask.

"Guerrero," the Dweller said. "Come. The Director will be pleased to see you."

"Cartier's... here?"

The Dweller in the Shades didn't answer. As El Esbirro del Traje flew through the black teleportation circle she'd conjured, and he felt himself lift from the ground alongside her heading in the same direction, Esteban felt his consciousness fading.

"El," he said, before passing out. "*El* Guerrero."

***

There was no end to the piles of bones, Rumiko Moroboshi-aka Psywave--thought. Great ragged stacks of them extended to the dark-shrouded ceiling of the offshoot chamber she and Bonnie were in. There were paths through them, winding circuitously toward... toward what?

Cendra had said all paths eventually led to the Charnel House, in the hours between when it rose and the Hour of the Wolf (or, roughly 3 a.m., local time). She had also said there was a nigh-impenetrable barrier closely surrounding the Charnel House at the center, one that could only be passed by either succeeding at a fiendishly difficult task that had, sadly, not been described by the entry in the recently unlost second volume of the Journals of Richard Cartier she'd read, or by making some kind of unimaginable cosmic sound, also undetailed.

Worry about that when we get there, she thought. For now, as there were potential enemies around every bone pile they navigated, it was best to concentrate and stay silent...

"Why won't you guide me *now,* you stupid tractor part!" Bonnie yelled at the Damn Thing, which she held before her like a dowsing rod.

...or as silent as possible, which at the moment seemed to be 'not at all.'

"Quiet," Rumi hissed. "You want to run into more skeleton warriors?"

"Pssh," said Bonnie. "Psywave, you remember what Cendra said Cartier wrote. 'Skeleton warriors just happen.' Like they just spontaneously fly back together out of these piles, pick up some weaponry that just happens to be lying about, and have a go at whoever's dumb enough to walk the *Path of Bone.* They're en-bee-dee." She whacked the grooved part of the Damn Thing. "Wake up in there!"

The Damn Thing... or whatever was manipulating it... had virtually pulled them along, from the _Subtler Than Light_ in Venice to the gate at Point Fermin, and literally pulled them along through several chambers, once they'd passed through the gate and were on the Path. Then, abruptly, it had lost whatever animating force had been making it move.

"I remember Dr. Gigawatt talking about what what we know of the Damn Thing's history," said Rumi. "Wasn't it a prison for some kind of psychotronic mental energy villain at one point? Ahhh... Gorgax, his name was?"

"Maybe," Bonnie replied. "He never said Gorgax could make it move around, though. Seemed surprised as we were, earlier. Plus... whatever's in there, I'm not getting a vibe of 'crazy villainous energy dude.' So... now what?"

'Now what' was a good question. The way things were going, the only way they were ever going to get out alive, never mind save Galaxy Hunter by getting the Damn Thing to her, was if she just spontaneously burst out of one of the piles of bones, and what were the odds of *that* happening?

She waited. Hunter failed to spontaneously burst out of anything.

"Worth a try," she muttered.

"Hey!" a voice called, from somewhere in front of them. "Who's there?"

"Shhh," Psywave said, motioning for Bonnie to stay put while she glided ahead, psychokinetic shields at the ready. "This could be a trap..."

She rounded a bone pile, and saw that it was... but not for her.

"Um, hi," said Moon Moon, from where he was suspended, ten feet above the cavern floor. "I was trying to get this, 'cause I always wanted a tooth, but... can you get me down?"

Rumi considered the muscle-bound werewolf, who hung from the lower jaw of a Tyrannosaurus Rex skull, his t-shirt snagged on one of the teeth he'd evidently been trying to acquire. He held another tooth, nearly as long as he was tall, and grinned.

She flew up to his level and reached out with her psychokinetic field. Moon Moon was a heavy-if good-boy, but not so much she couldn't lift him up a bit. In her mind's eye, the energy she projected was a wave that reached from her body to his, wrapping around it in a moment. Moon Moon's eyes grew wide, and his grin grew broader as he felt the unseen energy grip him firmly, lift him up, move him a bit away from the precarious position of the dinosaur skull, and then lower him to the ground. She descended as well.

"Thanks... uh... Psywave," said Moon Moon. "I was gnawing on a femur from a skeleton warrior I chased and lost track of where I was going. You ladies all right?"

"We're okay," said Bonnie, even as she glared at the superguy she didn't know was named Rumi. "And *someone* could've transported me *that* way coming out here."

"My control's not so great on high-speed flights," Rumi told her, biting back exasperation. "I can fly fast or psychokinetically carry a load, but not both."

"Ha," said Moon Moon. "She called you a load."

"She can call me whatever she wants," Bonnie answered, returning her attention to the Damn Thing, "so long as she gets me to Galaxy Hun--"

There was no warning. Three armored forms emerged from passages between the surrounding bone piles... but they weren't skeletons. Nor were those cutlasses they were carrying. One was behind Bonnie and aiming at her back before Rumi could blink.

"Nobody move," said the armor-wearing Reptiloid who had the drop on Bonnie, as their laser-rifle emitted a high-pitched, 'ready to burn a hole through whatever's in front' sound. "Tanzel, Stashe, cover them."

Two more armored Reptiloids stepped out of the shadows, though it was not yet clear which was Tanzel and which was Stashe. Their aimed rifles also made 'at the ready' sounds.

"You were right, Slith," said one of them. Rumi decided to call that one Stashe, as they had a weaselly kind of hiss to their voice, a 'Stashe' voice if she ever heard one. "They actually brought the Damn Thing with them. After you said they would, a-aaaaan' T'Shamka said there was no way even the humans'd be that cra-zeeee, an' you said you'd show her, and she said if they did she'd make you the deputy leader of the Order, like there was no way..."

'Slith,' Rumi thought. Did that mean...?

Before she could think of what that meant, she shut down the thought. Even with the anti-telepathy shields that had been integrated into her brain starting at a young age, she felt she didn't dare pursue it any farther. The strange, in-between place they were in now didn't follow all the rules from the outside world, that much was clear. And there were thoughts she didn't yet dare think too loudly.

Time to clamp down, like the Hunter Corps had taught.

"Slithis?" asked Bonnie, who, Rumi thought, if she had any kind of mental clamp, had probably let it fall apart from lack of use. "That is you in there, right? The hell you doing?"

The lead Reptiloid regarded Bonnie for a few seconds, then tapped his helmet. The faceplate glass retracted, and the helmet itself seemed to melt into the rest of the suit. Rumi instantly recognized the shifting multi-colors of Slithis's scales, the result of crossing over from one altiverse into another and passing through a large body of powerful, free-floating magic--temporarily lost by Shadebeam, who'd also crossed over--in the process.

She didn't recognize the look in his golden, vertical-pupiled eyes. Slithis had been through a lot over the years, even before he left 001SFSTORY and become a permanent resident of 000SUPERGUY and Shadebeam's husband, but he had never been this... intense. It felt as though someone else was looking out through his eyes... someone evaluating and judging them, even as she evaluated and judged.

"I'm serving our Hierarch," said Slithis, sounding flatter than Rumi ever remembered hearing him before. Bonnie, who Rumi knew probably had much more day-to-day experience with Slithis, having grown up in Malaga practically next door to him and Shadebeam, looked similarly puzzled. "T'Shamka, the Wise. T'Shamka, the Ascendant. T'Shamka, the..."

"...Expecting Us Right Now," said the third Reptiloid, who Rumi mentally assigned the name Tanzel, as it was the only one left. "So burn these two, take the Thing, and let's get--"

"Who did T'Shamka the *Wise* assign to lead this mission?" Slithis asked, his voice only rising when he emphasized 'wise.'

"Heh," heh'd Stashe. "You, Slith. You! HehHEHheh."

"So who gives the orders?"

Tanzel gave Stashe a cold look, and Slithis an even colder one, before answering.

"You... Aspirant Slithis."

"We will bring them with us," said Slithis, hefting his rifle. "The Damn Thing has chosen this... Bonnie... as T'Shamka foresaw."

"She what now?" Bonnie asked, even as she shifted to hold the Damn Thing between her and Slithis.

"And T'Shamka will want to question this one," Slithis went on, gesturing at Rumi, "to find out how she escaped the collapse of our Order's temple on Reptilos."

Rumi snarled, raising her arms as she gathered her psychokinetic energy...

...and stopped when both Stashe and Tanzel aimed their laser rifles directly at Bonnie.

"Slithis... damn it, no one's supposed to *know* that," Rumi growled. "We *agreed*..."

"What's he talking about?" Bonnie asked, looking at Rumi now with the same confusion she'd earlier directed at Slithis.

"I'd kinda like to know that," said Tanzel, directing a suspicious look at Slithis.

"This isn't just any superguy," Slithis told them, even as he leveled his rifle at Rumi. "She's the Galaxy Hunter that nearly ruined our plans on Reptilos... Rumi Moroboshi."

"Dammit, Slithis!" Rumi yelled.

"Rumi?" Bonnie asked. "I remember you... what the hell?"

Rumi sighed, then gestured at her facemask. "May I?" she asked, looking at Slithis.

He nodded, and she pulled it down.

"Whoah," said Bonnie. "I *do* remember you!"

"You should," Rumi answered, "I mean--"

"I never understood what you saw in my brother," Bonnie went on. "I thought maybe you had a concussion too many when you were out superguyin' with him."

"If only I could blame it on that," Rumi grumped.

Stashe made a hissing, weaselly laugh.

"But now I know why you were so rough with me flying," said Bonnie. "You never did like me."

"You were always spying on us," Rumi reminded her.

"Oh." Bonnie thought about it. "Yeah, I can see that now. Sorry about that."

"What did you mean, 'agreed,'" said Tanzel, in an attempt to re-center the conversation.

"When she's in front of T'Shamka, the Judge, who Hears All We Say, As You Well Know, So Shut It," Slithis said, "she will answer that question, and any others we have. Now, let's go."

He eyed Rumi, his pupils tightening into thin lines.

"Keep your lasers pressed up against Bonnie," he instructed. "This one won't use her psychokinetics so long as we hold her."

Bonnie looked at Rumi, and didn't seem happy when Rumi gave her a defeated nod. Bonnie started walking in the direction Tanzel and Stashe prodded her, looking as if she was furiously reconsidering her decision to come out to the Charnel House, and every life decision that had led up to that decision as well. Rumi couldn't blame her.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked Slithis, as the Reptiloid gestured with his rifle for her to follow. "What *happened* to you?"

Slithis's pupils widened briefly before returning to being tight and thin.

"The Knowing of the Glorious Truth of the Seven Engines happened to me," he said, at last. Rumi could hear the capitalization. "The Knowing of the Truth of Reptilos's Ascendance happened to me... just as they will happen to this entire galaxy. Now move."

Rumi moved. Slithis followed.

Her whole intent with concealing her identity behind a mask named 'Psywave,' she sullenly reflected, had been to keep the Scaled Order from seeing her coming until it was too late. But thanks to Slithis, who she'd once counted as a trusted friend... 'too late' had just arrived.

(concluded in part three, following...)

--
Subtler Than Light #8 (c) 2025 by Gary W. Olson. All Rights Reserved.

Gary W. Olson LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/gwox
Superguy/Sfstory LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/superguysfstory

SG: Subtler Than Light #8 (1/3): Skeleton

SUBTLER THAN LIGHT
Episode 8
[Hidden Hearts, Part Eight]
"Skeleton Warriors Just Happen"
by
Gary W. Olson

"I feel the cutting of your cheekbones
 On the temple of my skull
 The empty space of unlocked ribcage
 Once our hearts had made so full"

- The Forgetmenauts,
  "An Interlace of Bones"


***

The science lab of the _Subtler Than Light_ wasn't usually this packed, Bonnie Rydell knew. Usually it was just Bhossi and Cla'rabhelle (the bovine chief scientists), Dr. Giuseppe Gigawatt (the terribly brilliant, mildly insane, unnecessarily aromatic human they collaborated with), and assistants such as Shelby d'Rodang (human-size pterodactylish kaiju in a well-tailored lab coat) making the beakers full of colorful liquids bubble and causing the coily apparatus lining the walls to pop and sparkle with electrical surges. And all of them were present, currently clustered around a circular console displaying something inscrutably yet emphatically scientific.

Tonight they were joined by several others. Among them were Zia Azad, a contractor specializing in things conspiratorial and occult, currently pacing the length of the lab and arguing with someone on her phone about who-knew-what. Kid Gothic, the local superguy who'd received a minor injury in a battle that afternoon and had come to the ship to get treated, was hanging out in a corner between a scalar superliminalating dynatron and a suspiciously-overpowered espresso machine, talking at great length about something to Jolene Godziller, another human-sized zilla-ish kaiju who'd been brought in to have injuries treated, and who responded to Kid Gothic's monologuing by passing out. Other STL personnel steadily entered and exited the lab, carrying in lab reports, battery packs, and pizza, then carrying out empty boxes, drained cells, and experiments in need of a quick but thorough defusing.

Bonnie Rydell rubbed her eyes, sighed, and returned her attention to what had been occupying her attention for the past few hours: the massively magnified lines and shapes on the object that was now Hers To Study, on account of the fact that no one else had time, what with the crisis going on and all.

They were either circuits, pictoglyphs, sigils, or maps, depending on the filter setting, she thought. A slight angle change made them look like runes, but only until she looked at them *as* runes, at which point they immediately began resembling an overhead picture of Los Angeles freeways, before looking like circuits again. It was exhausting just trying to get a handle on them.

"What kind of tractor does that go to, Miss Rydell?" asked a sharp young voice.

Bonnie bit her lip to keep from groaning, recalling there was one more person in the lab, with nothing better to do than ask questions. She lowered her smartphone and stared at the surface of the Damn Thing, considering her answer. Most people, if they recognized the dark grey, foot-long, two-and-a-half-inch wide cylindrical object as anything at all, recognized it as a worm gear from an old tractor. (A 1962 diesel tractor stripped for parts in 1989, her mind insisted for no identifiable reason.) What it actually was... the unanswerable question of the many things it serially 'actually' was... was a more complicated matter. She looked up at Camila Veracruz's furry and inquisitive face.

"A tractor of unimaginable cosmic import, I expect," Bonnie answered, "And you can just call me 'Bonnie.'"

"But Dad said..."

"I think surviving demon monkey scrimmages and a sentient Utahraptor on the run entitles us to be on a first-name basis, Camila."

Camila nodded. "Have they found the dinosaur lady yet?"

The 'dinosaur lady' was ki Kazza Malissk, the red-feathered Utahraptor who was the equivalent of a superguy in the underground city she came from, whose theft of the Heart of Mu from the perma-crashed _Subtler Than Light_ had kicked off the day's insanity. After a moment's tired thought, Bonnie decided that wasn't enough to be on a first name basis with her.

"I was only half-paying attention when your mom gave her last update," said Bonnie. "She's on her way to Point Fermin to join her advance team. Thinks this *Sunken City*..." She winced at the inexplicable reverb before continuing. "...she's looking for is out there, and that's where the... ah... dino lady was going. Beyond that..."

"I know," Camila said, supporting her cheeks with her hands and her elbows on the counter where the Damn Thing rested. "Dad said I had to stay here while he and the rest of the pack took jetpacks out there to support them. Which *totally* isn't fair, because I'm part of the pack, too!"

"He wants you to stay safe," Bonnie said, as she leaned in to look at the Damn Thing again. There were inscriptions on one section of the heavy screw section that had looked maddeningly familiar through her technomagical phone's thaumaturgical filtering. If she combined trans-enochian decyphering with an old-timey sepia filter, it was possible...

"He said it was because mom grounded me!" Camila interrupted.

"That never stopped me before," Bonnie distractedly replied. It never had, to the loud chagrin of her mother, who'd grounded her often, or to the intense disapproval of her often-absent father, who rarely grounded her but had his lieutenants watch her as well as they could--which, most of the time, was not well enough. "Now let me focus, please. I'm on the edge of figuring out... well, not what this Damn Thing *is*, but what this new Galaxy Hunter needs it for, and if it's something we want her to have."

She looked up in time to see Camila disappear through the lab's door, barely avoiding knocking over Psywave, who'd just walked in. The red-haired, black-and-red-costumed superguy raised a masked eyebrow-muscle at the running werewolf, then shrugged.

Bonnie sighed. She'd been in the lab for more than half the day, trying to make sense of the strange, ancient-feeling object that had--according to a cranky and slowly-dying Shadebeam Moroboshi--'chosen' her as the one who would... what, exactly? Was she just meant to be a courier for getting it back to Galaxy Hunter, who needed it for reasons no one saw fit to tell her about? Was it more of a free-floating, general-purpose 'choosing' that would see her taking on some sort of empire and maybe blowing up a thing of theirs by chucking it in their garbage disposal? Was it just bored?

Dr. Gigawatt, who'd joined her at the start of her examinations, had been moderately helpful in telling her what he knew of the Damn Thing's history, at least so far as it had intersected with Vice President Quayle's ambitions and the Awesome Force's, the Defense Squad's, and Team Cynical's heroics in the late twentieth century. No less a scientific genius than Andy Awesome had led efforts to understand what it 'really' was and what it could do. That explanation had been couched in terms of something called 'Quantum Absurdity,' which Gigawatt glossed over as if Bonnie knew what the hell he was talking about. But he had to admit that investigations of the Damn Thing as a potential occult object had never been conducted--unless Team Cynical had done so and just never bothered to make notes about it.

As her phone's ScrySpy Pro app scanned the Damn Thing for known magical artifacts, including but not limited to sigils, signs, portents, nano-sized Old Crones, and portals to nether dimensions, she felt the weariness in her bones. She wasn't a superguy, damn it all. Just a part-time technomage and full-time bookstore owner who'd gotten roped into the day's drama by a Utahraptor who'd inconsiderately made her bookstore the meeting place between her and Bonnie's brother, Lemon, a nu-M.I.B. agent who's sudden return to her life was only contributing to the churn in her head. She didn't owe Galaxy Hunter *anything*. She didn't own *these people* anything. She didn't even owe Miguel Veracruz anything, though he was at least her friend.

So why had she volunteered to go to Malaga, she asked herself. Why had she accepted responsibility for getting something, anything, out of the Damn Thing, as Cendra Seconds had charged her to do before leaving for the 'Sunken City?' If Miguel had asked, she could at least point to that, since true friends were everything to her, but he hadn't. Cendra, meanwhile, would probably have been happy to see her go away, given that it had been Miguel's cheating on her with Bonnie that led to their divorce. And she hadn't known anyone else on the _Subtler Than Light_ before today.

"Skipping out is Lemon's game," she decided under her breath, as she switched to an ultraviolet filter that also added jaunty top hats to some of the more arch microscopic engravings her phone was reading. "Maybe I'm not gonna save a city, but I can do *this*, at least... so I'm gonna."

"Glad to hear it," said Psywave, from over her left shoulder. "What've you found so far?"

Bonnie gritted her teeth, exhaled, and looked up at Psywave's face as she moved around to get a better look at the Damn Thing. Settling in roughly the same place where Camila had been only a few minutes before, Psywave frowned thoughtfully at the Thing before looking up at Bonnie.

"It's... complicated," Bonnie said. "By which I mean, I'm getting roughly several dozen indications of extreme age, extreme inscrutability, and extreme mutability. *All* of which are deeply contradictory and suspect."

She stared at her phone screen blankly for a moment before shutting down the app.

"Or maybe you could just *tell* me what it's about."

Psywave looked momentarily taken aback. Though her eyes were hidden by the mask over the top half of her face, the way her skin flexed beneath its clinging fabric suggested she'd been startled.

A sensation tickled the back of Bonnie's neck. She felt as if she *knew* Psywave from somewhere. But... how?

"The woman inside that armor needs it," said Psywave, as she brushed back a strand of her artificially-red hair. "The armor she's got on... comes from the metal in that elevator that crashed outside of Malaga thirty-three years ago. The one that Burning M00se centers around now."

"I *know* what it is," Bonnie snapped. "I grew *up* there. Ancient elevator from the dawn of time, used by insanity-inducing entities for unfathomable purposes, etcetera, etcetera. I used a less-advanced, cheaper technomagic screen then to look at the metal for funsies, and got nothing like what I see on this Damn Thing... at least in the three seconds before my screen crumbled to glass dust and my phone made a sound like it was making a 9600-baud phone connection with Cthulhu's porn server before bricking."

Psywave's eyes narrowed. At least, her covered eyebrows made 'my eyes just narrowed' flexes.

"You take a new look at Hunter's armor," Psywave said, "you *will* see things." She paused, weighing her words. "Things Shadebeam wrote on it, to make it... work... with this."

"What... why didn't she just tell us this?"

"Don't know," Psywave admitted. "Wasn't there today. Had her reasons, I'm sure." She shook her head, and Bonnie had a feeling she was at least as exhausted as Bonnie felt. But she wasn't about to stop. "Look... would it be okay if I took it to her? I may not understand it, but I know she needs it, and it'll go really badly for her if she doesn't get it tonight. *Soon,* tonight."

Bonnie closed her eyes. She couldn't *think*, for crying out loud.

A loud scrape accompanied by a sad trombone sound snapped her eyes open.

Psywave stood still, her hand still over the area where the Damn Thing had been. The Thing itself was no longer there.

"What did you *do*?" Bonnie asked, angrily, drawing looks from everyone else in the vicinity. She looked around and saw the Damn Thing hovering next to the transparent tank that housed the flesh-eating spore cloud named Tony. Tony said nothing... at least nothing she could hear, but she could see its amorphous form pressing against the side of the tank farthest from the Thing, vibrating with what Bonnie could only guess was fear.

"Hey," said Gigawatt, breaking away from where he'd been with Bhossi and coming over. "Since when could that Thing fly around on its own?"

"Stay," Bonnie said. Gigawatt stopped moving forward, though she'd actually directed the word toward the Damn Thing itself. She didn't know why... but she was sure it, or something within it, understood her. "We need you. This... this Galaxy Hunter... needs you."

She advanced to within a step of where it hovered. It was twisting-without-moving in her sight again, but unlike the first time in Malaga, it didn't hurt inside her head so much as give her shivers. When she wrapped her fingers around it, its weight suddenly returned, as if it abruptly relaxed. This time, she was ready for it, and kept it from hitting the ground.

"Are you... can you talk to it?" Psywave asked.

"I think I just did," Bonnie replied. "I'm not sure if it understood, or..."

"Can you get it back into the case you brought it in with?" Psywave went on. "If it won't let me touch it, maybe if I get it to Hunter that way, she can handle the rest."

Bonnie considered the Damn Thing. It was making a small sound. Not quite humming...

"I appreciate it," said Bonnie. "But no. It chose me... and I *have* to see this through. Which means getting it to Hunter myself."

"Er..."

"With a little help," Bonnie admitted. "I don't have a car, much less any other way of getting to Point Fermin. Tuber went down earlier tonight, don't know why, but they say they won't be up 'till morning..."

"I can get you there," said Psywave. "You... sure you want to do this? It's gonna be dangerous, and that's just me flying with a passenger. What's waiting for us... could be *really* bad."

"What friends I have, I don't let down," said Bonnie. "Ever."

She realized she was looking down at the Damn Thing as she spoke. Something tingled again on the back of her neck.

"Before you go," said Gigawatt, as he partially turned and waved to the group at Bhossi's desk. "There's something you should take with you."

Zia Azad broke away from Bhossi's group and came over. Bonnie saw there was a bottle in her hand.

"They're heading out to Point Fermin," said Gigawatt without preamble. "They can get it to China for you."

Zia blinked. "But Cendra told us to focus on..."

"...and you can focus *better* by not being distracted by that bottle," Gigawatt finished. "You said yourself she was the only one who could confirm... and that she would when she sees what was under that label that came off."

"Right," said Zia, though she was clearly skeptical. She looked back and forth from Psywave to Bonnie. "So, who wants it?"

"I had Sindal and Mec bring my jacket over after they locked up my store," said Bonnie, gesturing to a brown jacket with a surprising number of zippers. "It looks cheap, I know, but it keeps my stuff safe and unbroken."

Zia handed Bonnie the bottle.

"Good luck," Zia said, as she turned to go back to Bhossi and Cla'rabhelle. "When you see China, tell her the portents are more portentous than ever."

Bonnie blinked.

"Never mind," Zia sighed.

"You ready?" Psywave asked.

"Aren't we going to the top deck?" asked Bonnie, as she stowed her phone and the bottle in the jacket she put on.

"Doctor?" asked Psywave. "You... must have a quick exit from here. I mean... it stands to... reason?"

Gigawatt's eyes narrowed.

"How... never mind," he said. He dashed through the door that led to his private sanctum. A few seconds later, the window next to Bhossi and Cla'rabhelle's group retracted into the wall, startling everyone there.

"Doctor!" Bhossi yelled through the speaker on her bovine neck. "Now is not the time to launch a yarn raid on Hobby Lobby again!"

"Not for me!" Gigawatt exclaimed, as he rushed back into the room. "For them!"

"Thanks, Doc!" said Psywave, who then looked at Bonnie. "Again... you ready?"

"As I'll ever be," said Bonnie, as she closed her jacket over her front. The weight of the Damn Thing pressed against her chest and belly. She whispered a word, and the jacket abruptly tightened about her waist. When she released her hands, the Thing sagged a bit, but was held firm at belt level. A ping sound came from the pocket she'd stuffed her phone in. "So do I climb on your back, or are we doing that 'take my hand and dreamily fly through the open air over the city' thing, or... hrrrrrruuuuUUUUUUUUUUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--"

They were through the open lab window before Bonnie's scream trailed off. Bonnie watched the night-lit _Subtler Than Light_ recede under Psywave's shoulder as they gained altitude and speed. The Damn Thing dug hard into her front as the arm beneath it held her firm. The other arm, hooked under one thigh, dug someplace where she wasn't fond of things digging.

"This is *not* how you carry someone in your arms!" she yelled, as Psywave banked left and brought the rising moon into view. "*Not* upside down! Haven't you ever--"

"You were angled wrong and I was in a hurry!" Psywave interrupted. "Now hang on, I can get us to the *Sunken City* in minutes if I go all out!"

"Just turn me oveeeeerrrrrrraaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--"

***

*It's about *time* you got here.*

China Moroboshi looked down at the ten-year-old blonde-haired girl in the pink sun dress and white sun hat with all the exasperation she felt, plus some extra because the occasion demanded it. She stepped off the fluttering chain-link ladder and onto the sand without a word to the apparition. She gave the pilot a wave, indicating she was clear and he could depart.

As the black-and-red Harxxon transport chopper ascended into the near-dark sky, China heard a familiar rasp.

*I don't think she's happy to see us, Kyoko,* said young China.

Adult China spotted the immaterial image of the ten-year-old bone white girl she had once been, crouched in the sand next to Kyoko, fashioning the image of a sand castle. It was a surprisingly complex castle, one that apparently held together due to how much blood Kyoko was letting drip from her apparently-bear-mauled arm onto it.

"This is the right place," China said. "Those two little fuckers started right in on me already. The Heart of Mu must be in the vicinity."

"Great," answered Cendra Seconds, her tone implying some degree of less-than-greatness in the news. "Remember they're not really you, and act accordingly."

*What does that mean?* asked young China, as she shaped another gore-glittery sand turret.

*I don't see how you can act accordingly,* Kyoko said, looking up at adult China. *You can't stab us at all.*

"And you can't stab me," adult China noted.

*Says you.*

China fought down a chill, and turned away from her invisible-to-everyone-else visitors to the others who had disembarked from Harxxon's transport.

Trice Maddox, the _Subtler Than Light's_ Chief Engineer, was directing her staff in setting up several dark metallic rods in various points around a section of warped air twenty yards wide. It wasn't aetheric tech--that tended not to work too far away from the STL--but it was the product of the STL science crew's collective tech genius-slash-madness, and Maddox had become proficient out of necessity at getting their equipment to work in the real world. Her assistant, Hector Marcowicz, waved to them from the far end of the boundary being set up.

"The force field should be good to go in six minutes," Trice said as China approached. "It should keep out the curiousity-seekers for as long as you need." She gestured to the half-dozen scuzzy onlookers watching from the nearby rocks, and the others looking down from higher up the cliffside. "The terrain really isn't great for this sort of thing, but it'll hold."

"Thanks, Trice," said China. "Sorry to keep you all day and night on this..."

"Are you kidding?" Trice asked, giving her a wink. "For the triple-overtime pay Harxxon agreed to, this is all right." She waved to the hazy air within the boundary they were setting up. "Cendra just went in. Probably should scoot in yourself before we switch it on."

*Ladies don't scoot,* said Kyoko.

*We're not ladies,* young China rasped.

Adult China bit back her sigh, nodded to Trice, and waved to Marty Steinmetz, the black-furred werepanther, and Moon Moon, the buff, blond-furred werewolf, whose imposing presences kept the onlookers from attempting more than onlooking. Then she stepped through the warped air... and saw the statue.

In many respects, it was identical to the version that could still be found in a park in Hamilton, Ohio--the only version known, if barely, to the general public. Twelve feet tall, square and two feet to a side at the base, narrowing to one foot to a side about halfway up, where it met a spherical shape with a large hole through it. It even had plaques, though the language of the inscriptions wasn't English here, rather an ancient script that caused China to again shudder.

So far as China knew, unlike the one in Ohio, which had been a grave marker for Hollow Earth theory expounder John Cleeve Symmes Jr, this statue wasn't a marker for anything. It also pulsed ominously, which the version in Ohio never did, so far as anyone noticed.

"Is this the monument you saw?" she asked Johnny Clark, who was standing only a couple feet away. The midnight-blue-haired young man nodded, still looking a bit out-of-it.

"And the rocks and lighthouse," said Johnny. "Not sure how you found the location from just that."

China watched Kyoko saunter up to Johnny and attempt to slap his thigh. She suppressed a grin when her hand passed through him.

*Just my luck,* Kyoko said. *Find a stack of mighty beef like this and I'm put on a strict non-corporeality diet.*

"We had it down to the coast south of Los Angeles," Cendra Seconds noted, as she emerged from behind the statue. "'Lighthouse' helped... but when we found something about a lighthouse next to a Sunken City... well, there it was."

"Yeah," said Miguel Veracruz, who emerged with her. "Who knew the *Sunken City* was... well... the Sunken City?"

*Am I the only one who did the assigned reading?* young China asked.

On the trip from the _Subtler Than Light_ in Venice Beach and the place they were in now, a place on the San Pedro coast called Point Fermin, Cendra gave the shortest version she could of the story. A landslide in 1929 sent several wood frame homes crashing down to sea level. Remains of the concrete foundations, sanitation systems, piping, and curbs were still visible, though coated in layers of spray paint visited upon them by explorers of abandoned places through the years, despite the area having been fenced off and the threat of heavy fines for sneaking in. Its safety was questionable, its trespassing enforcement was spotty, and its bizarre beauty, both natural and artistic, had led to it becoming a minor--albeit illegal--tourist attraction that came to be known as the Sunken City. Even though the 'City' part was doing some heavy lifting.

"Maybe I should have," said Manny Seconds, who China realized had been standing quietly to her left, alongside Karina Selanova. "In Cartier's journal, the path to the Charnel House came into being in East Gothopolis's Sailortown, years after a sinkhole wrecked the docks and forced shipping to go... well. It was a hard-to-get-to place like this, on a shore, where only people who had nothing else tried to live."

As he spoke, Manny's two Secret Service agents skittered (as well as their tailored suits allowed) to flank him and Karina. Their impassive faces regarded China and everyone else in the vicinity with professional concern. Their gold compound eyes caught the l.e.d. glow from lights set up at the camp's perimeter. One chittered at another, who twitched.

"Not to hurry along the discussion," Karina interrupted, "but I got word from ops that there was unusual activity in this area in the last few hours. And I found one of these." She held up a small necktie, of the kind China recognized from that morning, having seen them around the necks of some of the Demon Monkeys trying to obtain the Heart of Mu. "The nu-M.I.B. made it here ahead of us."

"Is that really what we're calling it?" asked Dr. Erin McCavish, who broke away from a small group of people (three human, one Megaloon) in medical-looking white garments to join them. "New Mibbies?"

"Noobs," Manny observed.

"Or noobies," China suggested.

*Tubular noobulars,* Kyoko tried.

"Shouldn't Esteban and your pack-mates be back already, Miguel?" Manny asked, after not hearing Kyoko at all, and giving China's suggestion a polite wince.

"Esteban should be back any minute to report on what Apples and Miko and he found," Miguel confirmed, looking back at something behind the statue. "Then we can go in... if you're sure you want to, Un... Manny."

"I've got to go in," Manny said, "at least part way. There's something personal Chal wants me to confirm."

"And we'll be guarding him," Karina noted, indicating herself and the Secret Service agents, "while I confirm some other things regarding the composition of these... Noobs... who I expect are already within."

"Gonna be a bit awkward if we have to explain to people what the active Secretary of Defense is doing on an op like this," said Cendra.

"They won't know," said Karina. "It's not like I'm putting it in a Signal chat."

*I bet *we* know why,* said young China, nodding up at Adult China.

Adult China nodded back, as she gave Karina Selanova a studying look. Though decades had passed since Karina had been an M.I.B. Special Special Agent charged with pursuing the notorious fugitives, Radian and Shadebeam (and China, then an immaterial entity in Radian's bloodstream), across the world, and though Karina had, in the end, come through as an ally against both her former employers and the manipulative, would-be-universe-remaking sentience known as ARCANA, they had never worked easily together after China acquired a physical adult body and they both went to work for Chalandra Harkness at Harxxon. Less still after China stepped down as V.P. and joined Cendra on the _Subtler Than Light._

Karina didn't react to China's appraising look, anymore than she'd heard China's suggestion of a hidden motive, but China felt sure she'd noticed. Not that the motive was especially hidden--Karina's antipathy toward the secretive group that was claiming to be the revival of her former espionage organization was nothing new.

"Two minutes!" called Trice from the other side of the wall of haze. "Anyone in that should be out, or vice versa, get yourselves sorted now!"

"Here comes Esteban now!" Johnny yelled.

A second later, Esteban Veracruz, his lower half propelled by the much-too-big armored battle-pants known as Los Pantalones, soared out from behind the statue. He landed before Miguel, already rushing his words.

"It's freaky in there," Esteban said. "There's werewolves and skeleton warriors with cutlasses running around and demon monkeys 'porting around and it's so easy to lose track of where you are and..." he shook his head and looked at Miguel. "Apples says she smelled August Rydell. Says to follow her and she'll lead you to him."

Miguel grimly smiled. "Then let's..."

"The Heart of Mu is the priority," Cendra interrupted.

*That and great savings at Menard's,* young China noted.

"If getting to August gets us that, great," Cendra went on, "but we've got to lock that down first. Otherwise--"

"Incoming!" yelled Marty, from the other side of the hazy air boundary.

"--AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAuuuuuuuuuiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee..."

It took China a moment to realize that the strange, multi-limbed being that set down between her and the statue was in fact two separate humanoid beings. One of them, Psywave, was trying to set down her passenger, Bonnie Rydell, a task made more difficult by the fact that Bonnie had a leg curled beneath Psywave's armpit, and had somehow contorted the rest of her body so that her arms were around Psywave's neck from the back and her chin was hooked over Psywave's shoulder.

Bonnie dropped from the staggering Psywave and wobbled a few moments before standing upright and accepting Johnny's steadying hand. She ignored the warning chirps and chitters from the Agents.

"Hiya!" Bonnie said, her chipper tone wavering in time with her knees. She unzipped a jacket pocket, pulled out a brown glass bottle, and unsteadily tossed it at China. "This is for you... I think? Your lady Zia said you needed to see it." She wobbled once more, then firmly stood.

China caught the bottle, but kept her eyes on Bonnie and Psywave.

"Oh, and your portents are totes portentous or something," Bonnie added. "But I'm sure you get that all the time."

China briefly smiled.

"Sorry, everyone," said Psywave, as she glared at Bonnie. "Had to get here before... sorry, my ears are still ringing..."

"Then learn how to carry a passenger!" Bonnie shouted at her.

Suddenly, her jacket bulged.

*Saaay,* Kyoko saaayed.

"Okay, okay!" Bonnie said, looking down at the cylindrical form threatening to ruin her jacket's zipper. "We're here, now what--"

"You guys okay in here?" asked Moon Moon, as he bounded through the haze barrier. He paused on seeing Bonnie. "Oh, hi, Bourbon!" he exclaimed, a dopey grin breaking across his blond-furred canine features. "Was that you screaming? Who's your friend?"

"Psywave," said Psywave, essaying a tired (non-Psy) wave.

*Hey, cuz,* said young China.

Adult China frowned. 'Cuz?' she thought, as she considered Psywave.

"Great, everyone's here," Cendra said, sounding like someone keeping her patience in a chokehold to keep it from escaping. "Bonnie, is that the Damn Thing in your jacket, or are you just happy to see us? Did you get the answers I told you to get?"

"A few answers and a lot more questions," said Bonnie. "But Galaxy Hunter's life's at stake without it, and I'm the only one who can get it to her. So--"

"Fifteen seconds!" Trice called from outside the barrier. "Moon Moon, get back he--"

"Incoming again!" Marty yelled.

"--eeeeeeoooooOOOOOOEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAeeeeeeeee!"

This time, the yell was higher-pitched and continuous. A jet pack at full thrust streaked down from the night sky, carrying a brown-furred girl who looked to be about half the size the jet pack was made for. She corkscrewed around the statue, scattering Manny, Karina, Cendra, Miguel, China, Moon Moon, and everyone else, before plunging into the cavernous entrance to the Path of Bone.

Cendra looked up, alarmed. "Was that--?"

"It was!" Miguel answered. "Camila... I told her to stay in the Science Lab with the Mu'kaos! I even locked down her fitted jetpack!"

With a *thrum* sound, the force field snapped into existence, coating the sky around the encampment with a bluish light.

"So she got one that didn't fit," said Cendra, as she got to her feet. "But how did she get all the way here?"

*Practice!* young China and Kyoko chorused.

Psywave and Bonnie looked at one another. Cendra looked at them, and groaned.

"She followed you two," China said, before Cendra could. "And now she's in..."

Miguel snarled, then bounded through the opening to the Path. Cendra sprinted after him. Esteban flew in as well, immediately followed by a loping Moon Moon.

"Sorry!" Bonnie called after them. "We didn't... hey! Down, boy!"

The Damn Thing pulled at Bonnie's jacket so hard it forced Bonnie to stumble toward the entrance. Psywave grabbed her jacket just before Bonnie's feet left the ground, and both flew into the Path entrance at an increasing speed. Johnny Clark muttered something under his breath and ran after them.

"Go on!" Erin called. "I'll follow when the medpacks are ready!"

"Got a feeling we'll need them," said Manny. He looked up at Karina. "Shall we, my dear?"

Karina took his arm and escorted him into the Path as fast as Manny could hobble, followed by his skittering service detail. The sound of his cane on the rock vanished the instant he was out of sight.

*Hey, lady we used to be!* young China called to adult China. *Are we going to join this badly-thought-out bumrush of danger or what?*

*Yeah!* Kyoko added. *All the best decapitations will be over if we wait!*

China eyed the youthful apparitions with a mix of annoyance and suspicion, before sighing and starting for the entrance. She stopped on realizing she was still holding the bottle Bonnie had tossed to her. Reluctantly, she stopped and lifted it to her eyes.

Before, she remembered, the bottles had all had a label showing the eleven-step antlered pyramid that was the calling card of the supposedly-destroyed M00se Illuminati. The label on this bottle, however, was mostly gone, having evidently been soaked off. China spun the bottle in her hands, trying to see whatever it was Zia wanted her to see.

Her last turn brought up something etched directly into the bottle glass.

It was a hieroglyph of a cow exploding.

China felt her heart freeze and her neck tingle.

*And let's not even get into what her spleen's doing,* Kyoko added.

"Not *these* guys again," China groaned.

*Which guys?* China asked.

*You know, *these* guys,* said Kyoko. *Pay attention, twerp.*

"I thought the Dis/Order was..." adult China went on. "...no, they weren't destroyed, they just... vanished... after Mom and Aunt Shade and I went into the TransDemense for the first time. And things got so crazy after we never stopped to figure out what happened to them."

*Gee,* rasped young China. *It's almost like the Author forgot about them all those years ago.*

[Young China, Kyoko, and Adult China paused and gave an exasperated look through the fourth wall to you, the reader.]

"Gotta let Cendra know about this," said China, as she sprinted for the entrance. "Erin, you're in charge till I or Cendra get back!"

"Wait!" called Erin, who had no idea what China had just figured out. "Where--"

But then China was through--

--and immediately found herself staring into her own empty eye sockets.

(continued in part two, following...)

--
Subtler Than Light #8 (c) 2025 by Gary W. Olson. All Rights Reserved.

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